Knowing the primary user of a computer system is valuable in enterprise computing environments, as well other computing environments such as retail sites having point-of-sale computer terminals. By way of example, if a problem is detected, a person from technical support needs to find the computer system to service it, and typically a computer system's physical location is associated with its primary user, e.g., in the user's office, computer laboratory and so forth. Further, it may be necessary to contact the user to resolve the issue. Similarly, an asset manager may need to find a computer system to investigate an issue related to the asset, such as for asset reporting, decommissioning an old machine, and so forth.
However, known ways to determine a computer system's primary user and/or determine other system usage information are inadequate and inefficient. For example, one known technique is to determine the user that last logged onto a computer system at issue. Another is to determine who is logged on when an automated inventory is taken. However the last or current person logged onto that computer system may have been or may be a help desk professional or perhaps a one-time or otherwise infrequent user of the system. Further, some computer systems are shared among users, such as kiosks or by worker shifts, whereby a “last-user” or “current-user” type of determination often provides meaningless information.